A Measure of Guilt
by freifraufischer
Summary: It was a long night on Colonial One for Laura Roslin and her ghosts. Set "A Measure of Salvation" I dedicate this fic to whatever it is in the Battlestar Galactica water supply that makes so many people see visual hallucinations. Roslin/Adar discussed, Roslin/Adama and Roslin/Zarak implied.


If someone had asked her how she felt after the Galactica officers had left that evening, Laura Roslin probably would have said she wouldn't have trouble sleeping that night. But no one asked. The only one who might have was Bill, and this was one of those nights when she didn't really want to sit in his judgmental gaze. He had come to her to make a decision, one that he had punted because he couldn't live with it, but expected her to. When she had made herself hard in her heart and ordered the genocide of the Cylon race he had looked at her with that edge of disappointment he gave his son when he didn't live up to the Old Man's standards.

Bill Adama wanted the blame of history on someone else's shoulders. He had known what had to be done, and punted. And she supposed tonight he was over on Galactica sleeping the sleep of the just, while she was lying in her bed on Colonial One staring up at the ceiling panels.

"Frak it," she grumbled as she slipped out of bed.

She reached for a light robe, but decided better of it and picked up a man's dress shirt that was folded away in the corner where it couldn't be seen by someone standing at the door. Laura ran her fingers along the collar and brought the shirt up to her face, inhaling the faint wisps of the shirt's owner, before slipping it on and pushing the sleeves up so they didn't hang down past her hands.

She walked over to the window and scanned the ships of their rag tag fleet beyond the massive hulk of Galactica. She wanted someone to talk to, and for a moment she thought about picking up the telephone but just as suddenly decided against it. Just because she couldn't sleep didn't mean Tom should have to give up his night as well.

"Don't you think you were a little hard on that boy?"

The voice didn't shock or surprise her, though if she had heard it at some other time than the dead of night it might have. She looked over her shoulder and saw Richard Adar leaning against one of the bulkheads. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up, but a tie still knotted closely around his neck. She had teased him more than once that he undermined one look with the other. Neither serious nor relaxed.

"The Admiral can take care of himself."

He smiled. "Only you would call Adama a boy. Is no one a man in your eyes, Laura? I meant Helo."

"Captain Agathon isn't a boy either. There are no children anymore… just old men in young men's bodies." She stiffened and turned to face him. Richard Adar, dead and gone, still had an easy smile that made her blush. He had always said it was so easy to make her blush, with that mane of red hair. She hadn't been able to tell him than that he was the only one in years that had been able to do it. Richard was more a school yard crush than a lover, something she had started to understand near the end. Before the end.

The ghost of the former President of the Colonies seemed oblivious to her self-reflection, though. "He reminds me of that assistant of yours, Willy was his name?"

"Billy," she corrected quietly. She wasn't terribly comfortable thinking of Helo that way though. Probably because each time she saw his face she thought about his child. Every sin shall come to light in the end; hers were manifest and many.

"You never did like being told you were wrong," Adar said as he walked closer to her and brushed a finger along her cheek. "Always so sure that you were right about everything. It was one of your more endearing and infuriating faults."

"Patronizing me wasn't one of your better qualities, Richard."

"But that's why I'm here, isn't it? So I can reassure you that you did the right thing? So I can tell you that I would have done the same thing in the same circumstances? I can't absolve you of mass murder, Laura. I won't. Someday you will have to swim in the blood of your victims, it will get so deep."

For a moment Laura thought about slapping him, but it passed somewhere around the time she remembered that he was two years dead and gone now. "Perhaps, but humanity will survive to condemn me. Will they even remember you, Richard?"

It was a low blow, she knew as soon as she had said it. She watched him deflate for a moment before he narrowed his eyes at her. "You're the one who brought me here, Laura. If you want someone to admire you for your ruthlessness why don't you call Tom Zarek. You can celebrate your atrocities together."

She smiled. "I was wondering when you were going to bring that up."

Adar rolled his eyes. "I know you, Laura, better than you know yourself. Your taste in men is so predictable. Idolizing the man who won't have you and giving yourself like a whore to one who wont won't appreciate you."

"Which of those are you?"

The president didn't answer. "Does your dearest Admiral know you are frakking your Vice President?"

"I doubt it. He's too busy putting me on a pedestal or looking down on me from the moral high ground to really see me as a woman."

"And Zarek? I mean, for frak's sake Laura, Tom Frakking Zarek?"

She smiled enigmatically. "Afraid he's better than you in bed, Richard? Because he is."

Her strategic jab at his manhood landed squarely and Adar looked away from her. "He's a murderer."

"So am I. In fact, after tonight I'd wager to say I'm the bigger criminal."

"Presidents aren't murderers, Laura."

"Because they're presidents?" She turned away from him to look out the window again. "We're not better than anyone else, Richard. In fact, I'd say on most days we're little better than common gangsters. At least they have a chance of facing justice."

"Bullshit. You always were so good at that. Bullshit, that is. If you thought sending the virus to the Cylons was murder you wouldn't do it," Adar shot back confidently, but she was just smiling at him. Infuriated he kept talking, "Everything you do is justified in your mind. It's legal because President Laura Roslin, Savior of Humanity says it is."

She was laughing now and he was even more angry, perhaps just the last straw after having his manhood insulted and finding out that she was having an affair with the great nemesis of his life.

"What's so frakking funny, Laura?"

"You aren't here to reassure me, Richard."

"And what, pray tell, am I here for, Laura?"

"To condemn me," she answered quietly.

Just then there was a knock on the door, and the President woke from a fitful sleep to hear Tory's soft voice, "It's morning, Madam President."


End file.
